


a bunch of hocus pocus

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humour, Love, Promptober, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2020-11-24 17:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night..."A collection of my prompt fills for aosficnet's promptober challenge.





	1. Day 1 - Carving Pumpkins + Huntingbird

**Author's Note:**

> hello!  
Here's where I'll be posting all of my prompt fills for promptober! I'm having a bit of a time getting my life organised right now so these might not match up with the days completely but I'll be giving it my best shot! Feel free to prompt me something specific for a day on tumblr (@besidemethewholedamntime) if you like!  
I hope you enjoy <3

“Right, so I’ve got all the things here. I’ve got the spoons and the knives and the blowtorch and-”

“Blowtorch?” Bobbi looks up. “As in singular? What about me?”

Hunter shakes his head. “Well I thought we’d share, but I can get the other one out the garage no problem.”

“There’s no point now,” Bobbi sighs, getting off the couch. She takes the pair of goggles Hunter holds out to her. “I want first go, though.”

“Love, we’ve got nearly a hundred pumpkins to do. We’ll both get a turn of the blowtorch.”

It started out as a joke. The neighbourhood council demanded that every house ‘get into the spirit’ and, sick of their snooty looks and not-so-subtle raised eyebrows as they walked past every morning, Bobbi and Hunter were determined to show them exactly who they were dealing with. So they went big. Incredibly so. Now their haunted house has become a much-anticipated event, an unprecedented development that neither of them saw coming.

“I can’t believe you make us do this every year!”

“Oi! You love it and you know it.”

“Please, not as much as you. Flattery is clearly the key to your heart!”

“You would know, love. You own it.”

She can’t help the smile that comes to her face. An insufferable man that she’d gladly suffer for the rest of her life.

She playfully punches him on the shoulder. “Aw, you getting all soft on me?”

His moment is gone though, the pressures of Halloween clearly weighing heavily on his mind. “Not as soft as these pumpkins will get if we don’t carve scary faces into them and blacken them with a blowtorch.”

“They can wait a minute!”

“Halloween waits for no man, Bob! Come on!”

“Alright alright,” she admits defeat. “Lead the way.”


	2. Day 2 - Fall Drinks + Fitzsimmons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so for this one the 'drinks' part doesn't come in right until the end but it's cute family fluff and who doesn't love that?

“I don’t understand why she calls it _fall. Fall _is a verb, daddy! You _fall _down the stairs. It’s not a season!”

Jemma looks up at him, eyes narrowing over the screen of her laptop. “What?” She mouths.

Fitz makes his ‘this is all you’ face. He’s trying to fold the washing, a task that he’s been trying to do all day. He puts down the t-shirt and turns to face his daughter.

“Where’s this come from?” He tries, and fails, not to sigh. Sarah’s big, blue expectant eyes blink up at him, not a hint of a joke about them.

“Auntie Daisy said in her postcard that she would be coming in the _fall, _but that makes no sense! It’s _autumn_, daddy.”

“I know it is, kiddo.” He turns back to Jemma who’s trying hard not to laugh but it fighting a losing battle. No help to be had from her, it seems. Sarah’s become his shadow lately, following him around with questions that he rarely can answer simply. _Why is the sky blue, daddy? Why can we never touch the end of a rainbow? What does love feel like? _

Six years old and still as impossible as the day she was when she was born. Nothing is ever easy with Sarah. It’s his favourite thing about her.

“Then why does she say fall?” She puts her hands on her hips, forehead creased with her ‘thinking face’. Jemma splutters and quickly says, “Oh dear, I didn’t mean that. I must have choked on some air.”

“Sure you did,” he hisses. He turns back to Sarah. “Why don’t you ask your mum? I’m sure she’ll know.”

He gives Jemma a winning smirk, before Sarah says, “No, daddy. I want you to tell me.”

“Yes, daddy,” Jemma returns. “She wants _you _to tell her.”

He throws Jemma a glare that she just smiles her lovely smile at before turning her attention back to the screen, clearly having no further part in this bizarre discussion.

“So why?” His tenacious six-year-old demands, and he knows from experience she’s not very far away from stamping her foot. Her relentless pursuit for knowledge, the desire for answers makes his heart swell with love. He wants her to be whatever she wants to be, of course he does, but the fact that she gets this desire from them makes him very happy indeed.

It makes him happy, but it’s also tiring. “I don’t know, Sarah,” he sighs. “It’s American. Just one of the many things about them we’ll never understand.”

Jemma gasps. “Fitz.”

“Well you didn’t want to provide an answer, did you? Besides it’s accurate enough. They do all sorts of weird things over there.”

“Stop referring to it like it’s some alien planet, because we both know very well it’s not. We lived there for years!”

“Exactly! That’s how we know it’s so strange. Let me tell you, Jemma, we’ve both seen some things that wouldn’t have been out of place on Maveth, that’s for sure.”

“Oh my God, I cannot believe you. Half of our family is American!”

“I know, and I love them but they’re weird.”

“Well so are you!”

“Like you’re so perfect!”

“Um, daddy?”

At the interruption both Jemma and Fitz blink at each other, reminding themselves that they are, in fact, parents, and tell their own children not to squabble like this many times. Jemma stands up and announces she’s going to get a drink. Fitz coughs and says, “Sorry, kiddo.”

“It’s fine.” She waves away his apology. “I just want to know why it’s called _fall._”

“I honestly have no idea but if you give me ten minutes to finish up this washing then we can find out together, alright?”

Sarah gives him a smile that melts his heart and skips away.

-x-

“Okay, let’s see what we have here…” he murmurs. They sit together, Sarah on Fitz’s lap, back against his chest, tablet in front of them. Jemma walks in and coos, snapping a picture before disappearing once again.

“Aha! Found it!” He runs his finger along the line. “So according to this it actually used to be called fall in England and then America, but then English people started calling it Autumn instead and the Americans kept it as fall.”

“So we’re the wrong ones then?”

Now he sees why Jemma told him off. Sooner or later it always comes back to bite you. “Now, kiddo, I might have been a bit hasty with that. Nobody’s _wrong _here, we’re just different, is all.”

“You said that Americans were strange.”

Once upon a time he thought children had the memory of a goldfish, that things went in one year and fell straight out the other. Since he’s become a father he has learned that that is most definitely not true. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” she says flatly, sounding an awful lot like her mother. “You did.”

He blows out a breath. “Okay, that was wrong. There are some strange Americans, definitely, but not all Americans are strange.”

“Auntie Daisy is strange.”

“Yeah, but she’s a good kind of strange. She’s family. Family is always strange, no matter where they come from.”

“Hmmm.” She appears to consider it, bottom lip poking out. “Okay. Thank you, daddy.”

“Anytime, kiddo,” and he gives her a kiss on the hair.

She makes no move to get off him, though and he doesn’t want her to. She won’t be this size for long – her legs get longer every day – and he wants to make the most of the moments.

“Do you want to know what one of the best things about Autumn is?”

She looks up at him. “What?”

“There’s all of these cool autumn themed things out there to try and make. Want to find a recipe and ask if your mum and brother want to join us in the kitchen?”

Sarah beams at him. “Yes! And then we could save some for when Auntie Daisy comes to visit?”

“Of course,” he promises. “That sounds like an excellent plan.”

They spend the next half an hour deciding what they could make with that they have in the kitchen. When they have a few recipes picked out, Fitz turns to his daughter and says, “Of course we all know what we have to have if we’re making autumn things?”

“I don’t know,” she frowns, forehead creasing once again.

“Only the ‘best fall drink in the whole world’ as your Auntie Daisy calls it…”

“Hot chocolate!” Sarah cries, jumping down from his lap. “I love hot chocolate.”

“I know you do. Now get your mum and your brother and we’ll see what we can do.”

She goes to run off but pauses, coming back to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “I love you, daddy.”

Who would have known that autumn and hot chocolate could make him so emotional? He hugs her back. “I love you, too.”


	3. Day 3 - Halloween Decorating + Fitzsimmons

Fitz, out of breath from huffing the carrier bags up three flights of stairs to their flat, bursts through the door, throws the bags to the floor, and flops himself onto the couch with an _oof. _

“What happened to you?”

He looks up at Jemma, who’s standing with a cup of tea in her hand, eyebrows raised at the sight.

“Just… the bags…” he wheezes, resolving to get more in shape. Perhaps press-ups will do? He thinks he could manage to get into the double digits without too much trouble.

“I can see that,” Jemma remarks, stepping over one. “What on earth did you buy?”

He looks at her incredulously. “Halloween decorations! Did you forget?”

“I didn’t forget it’s the 3rd October if that’s what you’re asking,” she says drily. “I just don’t know why we’d ever need decorations.”

If he wasn’t so exhausted, he’s sure his jaw would drop to the floor. He’s known her for years now… yet this aversion to decorating for Halloween is certainly new to him. “You what?”

“I don’t know why we’d ever need decorations.” She puts her cup down on the floor beside her to rifle through the bags. “Fitz, what even is this stuff?”

He huffs. “Just Halloween stuff, isn’t it? Spider webs and bats and bin bags to cover all of the surfaces.”

She laughs. “_Bin bags?”_

“You know, you cover all the worktops in bin bags and the walls and it makes the place really dark and spooky.”

“I’ll bet it does,” Jemma murmurs. “It’s nice you went to all of this trouble, Fitz, but I don’t quite understand it, I’m afraid.”

He sits up, no longer tired, instead strangely curious. This is he and Jemma’s first Halloween together in their own flat – they weren’t allowed to decorate in halls and there just never seemed any point. This year, though, he’s determined to make it like his mum used to – with the pumpkin shaped candles and the plastic skeletons that sit in their stead on the couch. He wants it to be like home and since Jemma’s here, he’s already halfway there.

“What don’t you understand? Didn’t your mum and dad ever decorate the place for Halloween?”

“Eh.” She shrugs her shoulders and he knows she really means _no _but doesn’t want to say so. “We did apple bobbing and the thing where you eat donuts off a string when I was younger but,” she sighs. “I don’t know, I suppose I just got older and they got busier and it just never crossed our minds really.”

_Never crossed our minds. _That wouldn’t have flown when he lived with his mum. As soon as Halloween decorations began appearing in the beginning of September she would be in the shops, peering longingly at intricate displays that way many other people peer at Christmas ornaments. Decoration began early October, when she’d cut bin bags into all sorts of creations; long-legged spiders that were stuck to the wall, bats that framed the doorway, long black streamers that hung from the ceiling and tickled him as he walked through them. As soon as it was over she would be in the charity shops, scouting for those gothic ornaments that people may have parted with in order to get something new.

He’s loved being away, making new friends and doing things it was once feared he’d never get the opportunity to do. There’s something about this holiday, this overdone, oversold yet wonderfully magical holiday that makes him want to feel at _home. _But more than that. He wants to share it. Jemma could use a little magic in her life.

“We should decorate in here.”

Jemma scoffs, picking up her tea and getting off the floor. “I think you’ve already decided you are.”

“Yeah, but _we _should decorate, as in you and me. We should go really big for it.”

She looks at him as though she can’t understand him. “Why would we do that?”

He grins. “For the fun of it. You’ve never done it and I’ve not done it in ages. It can be our new tradition.”

She raises her eyebrow, and for a second he thinks she’s going to say no, that it’s ridiculous, that he’s ridiculous but she doesn’t. Instead she smiles.

“Alright, okay. We’ll decorate for Halloween.”

“Yes!” He punches the air victoriously. “It’ll be great, I promise you.”

“We need a plan though, Fitz. We can’t just start making decorations wildly otherwise this place will look a right mess.”

“Of course,” he says, nodding solemnly. “I would never dare to go without a plan.”

She says nothing, only smiles, and his heart thumps _home home home _in response.


	4. Day 4 - Haunted House + brotp FitzDaisy

He tip-toes gently, the floorboard creaking beneath his weight. A shiver runs up his spine. “I think this place is haunted.”

Beside him Daisy huffs. “C’mon, Fitz. Is Jemma seriously gonna believe that?”

He toes the floorboard again, looking at the peeling wallpaper and cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. “Um, yeah. I think she might.”

Jemma’s busy with work she’s unable to get out of so Daisy has been roped into helping with house-hunting. It had been going well, and the two houses they’ve looked at already over the past week have been perfectly pleasant, modern houses with stamp-sized back gardens and neighbours that are so close you can see into their windows. Lovely, but too pristine, too perfect to hold their perfectly imperfect life.

So they’d decided to go older, only Fitz didn’t imagine that it would be quite _so _old. And creepy. Definitely creepy.

“Our estate agent didn’t mention anything about this,” he murmurs, looking for the light switch.

“You asked him for an old house that you could view this week, nothing else. Poor guy probably just wants this place sold.”

“He isn’t selling it,” Fitz says, not looking at Daisy but at the disturbing shadows in the lightshade. “Or his company isn’t. The owner is.”

She huffs, and out of the corner of his eye he sees her run her finger along the wall. “Well then the owner probably just wants rid of it.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not so bad. A fresh lick of paint, some new carpets, some air-freshener to cover that musty smell and you’ll be good to go!”

Gingerly, Fitz flicks the light switch. It was a mistake. The hall looks even worse when illuminated. _Is that mould in the corner? _There’s something very disturbing about the way the dust hangs in the air. He shivers.

“I think we should just go.”

Daisy spins around, arms stretched out wide, though fingers curled to avoid touching anything by accident. The floorboards creak; he imagines the warped wood and feels the headache build behind his eyes.

“You were the one that said you didn’t mind a project,” she says.

“Yeah, I meant some painting, maybe doing up a kitchen. I didn’t want to buy a bloody money pit.” He sighs. “Nothing we do to this house will ever make it good enough.” The floorboards creak again. “Or less haunted.”

Daisy rolls her eyes. “It’s not haunted!”

“Oh, I’d say it definitely is.”

It’s haunted and it’s definitely not going to be his and Jemma’s home. It’s not as though this had to be the house, it just would have been nice to have finally found one. They’ve been looking for months and everytime they go for a viewing they always just find what they don’t want, but never what they do.

“I’m going to go outside,” he mumbles, tears pricking the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t stop to see if Daisy will come after him, he just knows he has to _get out _as quickly as he can.

It’s dark now, well after seven. The estate agent, after seeing his face, makes a quick exit, saying something how he’ll have a look at other properties and will get back to him soon. Fitz nods, wearily sitting down on the front step of this godforsaken house, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Fitz!” Daisy calls, barrelling out of the house and almost straight into the back of him. “Oh, Fitz,” he hears her say softly, very Jemma-esque, and sits down next to him. “What’s up?”

“After all of this insane crap that we’ve gone through, I just would’ve liked to give her a good home. A place that’s _ours. _Yet every place we’ve seen is just…” he gestures. “Not good enough.”

“Aww, Fitz.” Daisy wraps her arm around his shoulder. “You’re Jemma’s favourite person in, like, the whole universe. I don’t think she cares about this as much as you think she does.”

“She wants us to have this life together that it just, it just feels like I can’t give her.”

Only as he says it does he realise how heavily it has weighed on him. No matter how much she reassures him, how tightly she presses herself to him at night, the fear is always there. The fear that he’s not good enough, that he can’t give her what she deserves… it keeps him up at night. This house isn’t the only thing that’s haunted.

“Fitz,” Daisy says firmly. “Look at me.”

Too scared not to, he does as he’s told.

“Jemma doesn’t _want _you to give her anything. She just wants you. Just you. Just this – God, what did she call you again? – ‘awkward heroic scientist’, alright?”

“But-”

“No, no ‘but’s. Jemma loves you. You love her. You’re both in the same time, in the same dimension and on the same planet. That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah but-”

“No. _That’s all that matters. _Okay?”

He feels lighter. Things he already knew, deep in the recesses of his mind, but things he’d forgotten. It’s nice to be reassured.

“Okay,” he nods. “Thanks, Daisy. I appreciate it.”

She smiles, clapping him on the shoulder before she stands back up. “Anytime. You two are perfect for each other but do you know what’s not perfect?”

He stands up, too, feeling the ache leave his chest. “What?”

Daisy glances behind them. “This house. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

This house is most definitely not perfect but he can’t help but tease, “What? I thought all it needed was some paint?”

“Uh-huh, that’s until I walked through that hallway and I felt a ghost _literally _pass through me. That was some paranormal shit there.”

He laughs, leading the way for them back to the car. “I told you, _I told you_, I thought it was haunted.”

“Yeah, well, you were right, Fitz. Congratulations.” Daisy looks back at the house, the way it merges with the inky black of the sky. She shivers. “Now let’s go!”


	5. Day 5 - Hayrides + Huntingbird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I got the hayride thing right? if I have then they sound amazingly fun!
> 
> Also I know I'm massively behind in these but something is better than nothing, right? :P

“A hayride?” Hunter screws his face up. “What the bloody hell is a hayride?”

“You’re not cute when you’re like this,” Bobbi warns. “And I’ve told you a thousand times: you sit on the back of a tractor, in the hay, and you go along for a ride.”

Hunter screws his face up further, until his features are almost indistinguishable from one another. “And how is that supposed to be fun?”

She elbows him. “It just is. We went on them all the time when I was a kid.”

“I love and respect that, Bob. It just seems a bit… American for me, to be honest.”

“Well Sophie is half-American,” she tells him. “And she wanted to go on a hayride. So you better get used to it.”

Hunter looks over to where their daughter stands in line with other children, bundled up in her bright red woollen jacket with the matching hat, scarf and gloves. She sees him and gives him the brightest smile, waving wildly. God, she’s so cute. He and Bobbi make great kids.

“Suppose I could,” he mutters, “If it makes her this happy.”

“You’re getting soppy,” she teases.

“Shut up. No I’m not. You’re getting soppy.”

“_If it makes her this happy. _You’re definitely getting soppy.”

“Look at our adorable daughter and tell me you’re not the same.”

“Oh, I’m 100% head over heels for that kid. I’m just not getting so defensive about it.”

“It wasn’t like _that_,” he says petulantly. “I just don’t like you implying I’m getting soppy, is all. Lance Hunter doesn’t get soppy.”

Bobbi sidles close to him, looping her arm around his. “Sure you do.”

Well… maybe he is getting soppier in his advancing age. Life is just so much easier now. Sure, he still has the nightmares and the flashbacks but Bobbi is always there to hold him and Sophie always has a funny story to share or a picture to show him and nothing is so terrible that he cannot bear it as long as he has his two girls by his side.

He feels his eyes getting misty and he blinks rapidly to clear them. Bobbi would never let him live it down. Both of them have often wondered if moving back to America was the right decision for them. They aren’t people of permanence, and if they spend so long in a place they tend to get all itchy and start scratching in all of the wrong places. Only now they have a daughter, a beautiful, wonderful daughter to think about, the most permanent thing of all. They’ve moved back with the intention of settling down and, while it’s only been a month or two, they seem to be managing alright. The wide grin on their daughter’s face as she bounces up and down on the back of a tractor tells him that.

“No,” he says, “I’m not. I’m as solid as a rock, me.”

“Of course you are,” Bobbi tells him, but he can tell from her tone she’s making fun of him. He doesn’t seem to mind it as much anymore.

“That hay ride thing looks fun, actually,” he admits, waving to Sophie with his free arm.

Bobbi’s face lights up and he has to wonder whose idea it really was to come here for the rides. “Wanna go on one?”

He goes to refuse but then thinks better of it, enjoying the brightness in her eyes. “Go on then.”

Anything for his girls, after all.


	6. Day 6 - Fitzsimmons + raking leaves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one got a little bit deeper and a little bit longer than I intended but I enjoyed it a lot so I hope you do, too!

Jemma steps out of their house on the first Sunday in October and finds the path carpeted in red/golden leaves. It’s a glorious sight, truly, and with the hills rolling in all directions and the wind whistling gently through the trees it makes a spectacular picture to send to her family back in Sheffield.

It’s beautiful, it really is, but the leaves on the path will only make it hazardous when the first frost of winter inevitably makes an appearance. They need to be raked up into a nice neat pile, the designated spot by the tree that they’ve marked for this exact occasion.

Fitz is in Glasgow, called there late last night by his mum who’s fallen and hurt her back. Nothing serious she’s been assured many times, but awkward and distressing for Fitz, who will take a few days to be shooed away from her house. Jemma can still see his face, phone in his hand, looking from her to their new daughter and back again.

“You’re going,” she had said, already dragging the suitcase out from the downstairs cupboard. “There’s not even a question.”

“You’re right,” he had said, dragging his free hand through his hair. “I just feel bad about leaving her.”

“She’s three months old, Fitz. A few days will not scar her for life, I promise you that.”

He’d nodded, exhaling heavily through his nose. “And you? You’ll be alright on your own?”

At first, she’d felt affronted – was she really that incompetent? – before realising that they’d had such little sleep as of late that only yesterday Fitz had put salt in her tea and Jemma had nipped to the shops with her pyjama top on, inside out.

“Yes,” she’d told him firmly. “We’ll be absolutely fine.”

Which they have been for the past twelve hours or so. Sarah had decided to sleep through the night for the first time in her short life and Jemma had managed to get down a full bowl of cornflakes before Sarah decided she would also like fed. Some washing and ironing has been done, and the living room has even been dusted for the first time in what feels like months, which is probably exactly how long it has been.

It’s just the leaves that present a problem. They need to be done, lest Fitz should break his neck on them when he returns, but Sarah isn’t content to be out of her mother’s sight and, Jemma thinks sadly, there’s only one of her.

The air is nippy and bites at her fingertips. She shivers, appreciating the view once more, before heading back inside. That’s when she sees the solution to her problem. Sitting on the hook behind the door, next to their jackets and scarves, is the baby sling that Sarah was gifted when she was born.

“Ah,” Jemma says, going over to inspect it. They’ve used it sporadically, out of forgetfulness rather than anything else. When there is two of them there never seems to be any need for it. It was a gift from May, who’d handed it over perfectly wrapped and with a smile and said, “This’ll come in handy. I hope you like it.”

Jemma feels herself smile. Of course, it would be Melinda May to the rescue. Hasn’t it always been?

“Come on then, darling,” she coos, taking it off the hook and walking over to her daughter who lies awake in her basket, blue eyes soaking in the world. “Let’s see if we can figure this thing out, shall we?”

It takes longer than Jemma was expecting. Firstly she has Sarah wrapped up in her winter wear (all gorgeously knitted by Daisy, who has taken up knitting in between saving the world), which is a feat in itself. Hats, it seems, are not her daughter’s favourite thing. Then she has to figure out how to manoeuvre an already irritable Sarah into position, a task that takes longer than she expected. After the fifth try she sets Sarah back down and rubs at her forehead, unsurprised when her hand comes away glistening.

“I know, I know,” she says as Sarah starts to mewl. “I just can’t figure it out. If I put your leg in that way then it seems like you’re hanging awfully low, but if I put it in the other way then it seems like your head is much too high.”

Jemma doesn’t remember having this trouble before. It just seemed so much _easier _when there was two of them to try and wrangle this contraption. She presses the heel of her hand to her eyes, not going to cry over something as silly as this.

“Right, let’s try this….” She brings out her laptop, pulling up YouTube, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world but accepting there’s no other way. It takes ten minutes, three videos and one very grumpy baby later but eventually Sarah is situated safely, if not entirely happily, against Jemma’s chest.

“Right then, darling,” she says, kissing the top of Sarah’s head. “Let’s go and rake some leaves, shall we?”

The view is breath-taking still, and even Sarah seems in awe of the hills and patchwork fields that surround their home. Her eyes are wide, drinking in everything there is to see, and not for the first time Jemma is reminded of how glad she is they moved here. This is the life they have envisioned for themselves, a home to call their own. A place to settle and have a family. This is what they deserve.

As she rakes Jemma sees the life they’ll have play out before her. There’s a corner of the garden that will be perfect for a swing set; she can already imagine Sarah will be quite the adventurer. There’s a tree with a sturdy limb, one that she’s sure would support a tree-house, designs of which she has already seen Fitz doodle away in his notebook late at night. This house was not chosen by accident. It’s going to give them everything they need, she’s sure of it.

It’s been a long time since she’s been able to just stand still and breathe in the frosty air and not have that permanent feeling of fear hovering at her shoulder. Yes, she’s worried for Fitz’s mum and she’s worried about Sarah and how they’ll manage to keep their draughty house warm in what promises to be an exceptionally cold winter, but she’s not _afraid. _There’s a feeling of ‘we can do this’ and nothing seems as insurmountable as it once did.

“Look around,” she whispers in Sarah’s ear, swivelling gently left and right to show her it all. “This is a wonderful place to grow up, isn’t it? This is exactly what you need.”

She’s been worried, when they’d first started looking at moving, that any place they’d picked wouldn’t be right. What if they thought it was a dream but it turned into a nightmare, the way it always seemed to before? What if they thought they were doing right by any future children they had, but it ended up being something held against them for the rest of their lives?

It was Fitz who had calmed her down, that stormy night when they were staying with her parents in the guest bed that was so enormous, she was afraid they’d lose each other in the middle of the night. He’d held her close, her head on his chest and his arm around her shoulder, and reassured her that everything would be fine.

“I’d live with you in a shack in the middle of the woods, you know that, right? We’ll be fine, Jemma. We just need to stick together and we’ll be fine.” He’d kissed her on the head. “I promise you that.”

They could have chosen a flat in the middle of the city, or a cabin on top of a mountain and it would have been fine, it would have been _enough. _What a change, to have Fritz be the one to soothe her fears and tell her not to worry. A change of their dynamic that has been their way since they were sixteen and yet it’s not unwelcome. A shake up is not such a bad thing every now and then.

Of course, with Sarah they are both frazzled, both the one to be peering into the baby books and scouring the netmums posts into the wee hours of the morning. She’s their whole world, this little bean who already has such a big personality it’s hard to believe. There’s nothing in this world they love more than her, not even each other. A scary kind of love, but one they wouldn’t trade for anything.

Jemma rakes leaves and thinks she wouldn’t trade any of this at all. Not the cold, not the leaves, not the sleepless nights and morning tantrums. Not one single second of it could she be persuaded to give away.

“You know, I used to be so afraid,” she tells her daughter, bouncing gently up and down as she rakes the leaves to their spot. “I used to be so afraid we wouldn’t get here, that something would stop us and we’d fall just short of our dream. It happened to us so many times before that I almost just expected it to happen again.”

All of those losses, those disappointments that she’ll never fully forget nor move on from. That sinking feeling in her chest that she became so accustomed to.

“But we got here, we did, and I’ve never been happier. And it’s such a silly thing to be thinking about while raking leaves, I know, and there’s not even any special reason for it.” She pauses, swiping away the beginning of a tear. “I’m just grateful.”

So incredibly grateful, filled with so much love she doesn’t know what to do with it. It won’t always be this way, she’s not stupid enough to think so. Some days it will be so hard that she’ll be transported to a time when everything was hard and she had to wade through the days like they were treacle and she had weights tied to her legs. But those days will not last forever, and once again the sun will shine and her daughter will smile and she’ll breathe the frosty air and decide _yes, this was worth everything. _

“This is a wonderful life, Sarah. It really is. Your father and I love you so much. You’ll have a ball.” She kisses her daughter on the head again, feeling silly and emotional but also blessed, and carries on raking the leaves into a nice neat pile so that her wonderful husband doesn’t break his neck on them when he returns, and so that winter may come at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments please feel free not to. Either way I hope you have a lovely day!


End file.
